Thomas Frederick Worrall
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Thomas Frederick Worrall (1872–1957) was a Staffordshire-born manual worker and talented watercolourist. He lived for a time in Lancashire and in the
upper Calder Valley The Upper Calder Valley lies in West Yorkshire, in northern England, and covers the towns of Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd, Luddendenfoot, and Sowerby Bridge, as well as a number of smaller settlements such as Portsmouth, Cornholme, W ...
area of Yorkshire but spent most of his adult life in
Barry Barry may refer to: People and fictional characters * Barry (name), including lists of people with the given name, nickname or surname, as well as fictional characters with the given name * Dancing Barry, stage name of Barry Richards (born c. 19 ...
, in South Wales, where he was also deeply involved in politics and stood for parliament in the general election of 1923 representing the Labour Party. He was the elder brother of the pottery and fabric designer
William Worrall William Edwin Worrall (1877-1940) was a Staffordshire-born designer of fabric, pottery, glass and stoneware. He was the brother of the watercolour painter Thomas Frederick Worrall and shared similar artistic ability. Early life William Edwin ...
.


Early life

Worrall was born in
Wednesbury Wednesbury () is a market town in Sandwell in the county of West Midlands, England. It is located near the source of the River Tame. Historically part of Staffordshire in the Hundred of Offlow, at the 2011 Census the town had a population of ...
, the son of Thomas Worrall, a blacksmith. Thomas Frederick was the eldest of three boys but had two step sisters and a step brother. The family lived in the Woods Bank area of Darlaston which was heavily industrialized, with foundries, mines and metal works. They lived on the side of a tramway that connected various metal-working plants, and this tramway formed the site of what is now Moxley Road. By the early 1890s the whole family had moved to the village of
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in the county of Lancashire, where the elder siblings were involved in local industries. Worrall senior, however, worked for a time as a blacksmith in Cheshire so was living away from the family. Although the centre of Church was heavily built up, with close-packed, terraced housing and many mills, foundries and chemical works, the Worralls lived in Dill Hall Lane which was surrounded by fields and pleasant views of countryside. There was a vista from their house across the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a canal in Northern England, linking the cities of Leeds and Liverpool. Over a distance of , crossing the Pennines, and including 91 locks on the main line. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal has several small branc ...
to Dunkenhalgh Park. Thomas Frederick married Martha Green in the spring of 1899 and their first-born was Robert, born in 1900. Martha's family had built the Albion Mill, which became known locally as Green's Mill, It was while a young man in the north of England that Worrall's artistic leanings emerged. He attended art lessons in Manchester and created a series of watercolours of local scenes including Priestly Clough and Fern Gore, both in nearby Accrington, and Stoodley Pike in Yorkshire (see list of works, below). There is a photograph of him aged about 20 years in Haslingden public library, labelled ''Tom Worrall, artist''. Not all of his pieces are signed, but when he did so he generally used the signature ''T. Worrall'' or sometimes the initials "TW". Artistic ability and an eye for colour was clearly a family trait as Worrall's brother William became a cotton print designer, and his youngest brother, Simeon, a painter and decorator. By the time he was in his late twenties, T.F. Worrall was a working as a blacksmith in the neighbouring county of Yorkshire, at a quarry in
Southowram Southowram () is a village in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England that stands on the hill top to the east of Halifax, on the south side of Shibden valley. The village falls within the Town ward of Calderdale Council. It is a small Pennine v ...
. This was a much less industrialized part of the country, indeed the family’s residence was “West Fields” adjacent to farmland. There were more children, with daughters Bertha and Mary born in 1902 and 1906 respectively. Worrall continued to work as a blacksmith, but was a
journeyman A journeyman, journeywoman, or journeyperson is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that fie ...
, not a
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.


Later life

The family moved again, this time to south Wales, where Thomas Frederick now began to work as a gas fitter. Their residence in 1911 was a terraced house, typical of the type found in the industrialized south Wales valleys but their village,
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, was semi-rural and surrounded by views of distant coasts and mountains. Once again, as in Darlaston, they lived alongside a tramway that now forms the base of a metalled road, namely Crescent Street. They named their terraced house Primrose Cottage, which still exists. Worrall had visited this part of the country in 1910 to address meetings of socialists, illustrating his interest in left-wing politics, supporting at that time the
Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...
. He attended the I.L.P. conferences in 1906 and 1907 and addressed the delegates. The south Wales years were Worrall’s most active as a painter and when the family moved to live in the small town of
Barry, South Wales Barry ( cy, Y Barri; ) is a town in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, on the north coast of the Bristol Channel approximately south-southwest of Cardiff. Barry is a seaside resort, with attractions including several beaches and the resurrected Bar ...
on the coast, his portfolio grew to include many observations of nearby maritime areas as well as further inland and further away. The Worrall residence in Cardiff Road, gave a view over Swanbridge Bay and Sully Island which inspired many depictions of that seascape. Although it was work firstly as a time keeper then as a store man in the new cement plant to the west of the town that first occupied him, Worrall returned to working with gas. He became an oxy-acetylene welder and lived in Barry until the end of his life, latterly in Hywel Crescent, and painted numerous images of local scenes. His family expanded too, with daughters Bessie and Edith born in 1913 and 1916 respectively. He became increasingly politically active, was secretary of the Barry Labour Representative Committee, and tried to be selected as the Labour Party candidate for the Llandaff and Barry constituency in 1918. He was unsuccessful on that occasion but was selected and stood in the 1923 general election. He received nearly 8000 votes but came third behind the Unionist and Liberal contenders. He attended the I.L.P. annual conference in 1925. During this time Worrall made visits back to Lancashire and painted scenes including the war memorial in Great Harwood which had been unveiled in 1926. He and his wife and elder children attended
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courses in Oxford which gave him opportunities to sketch scenes of the waterways and colleges, and visits to his two brothers in London and Glastonbury provided further potential for artistic work. After retirement from gas fitting, Worrall collected subscriptions for the Barry and District Co-operative and Industrial Society, a group in which he was a committee member until 1948. In 1938 he and his wife travelled to the United States where he created a collection of scenes including around Niagara, the Potomac, Blue Ridge Mountains and the Californian and New Mexico deserts. Worrall also travelled to Greece and Italy, working as a
stevedore A stevedore (), also called a longshoreman, a docker or a dockworker, is a waterfront manual laborer who is involved in loading and unloading ships, trucks, trains or airplanes. After the shipping container revolution of the 1960s, the number ...
to help fund the ventures, and some art from this period exists in private collections. By this time his creative work had moved away from mostly industrial and urban scenes to generally picturesque rural landscapes and included settings in the Lake District, Cornwall and Somerset. His depictions often included water, and he frequently used the technique of placing a house and/or tree in the foreground or middle distance. A good example of this is his painting of Stoodley Pike in Yorkshire, currently on display in Todmorden public library. Worrall sometimes used family visits as opportunities for art work. For example, a family get together in Haslingden in 1936 was a chance to paint scenes of West Yorkshire; visits to his daughter, Edith, who obtained a teaching post in Clitheroe led to depictions of the countryside around the River Whalley; and his brother's death and burial in Keswick led to Lake District landscapes. A visit to his brother-in-law in Mt. Rainier, Maryland, gave rise to paintings of the River Potomac, which are now in Washington DC Public Library, Killingley library and Brunswick Heritage Museum in
Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...
Worrall suffered from stomach cancer and died of heart failure in 1957 at home at 7 Hywel Drive, Barry. His daughter, Bertha was present and reported the death to the local registrar. He is buried in Merthyr Dyfan cemetery in Barry. There is no headstone.


Works in public collections

*Scenes of the Potomac and
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Washington DC Public Library The District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL) is the public library system for the District of Columbia, in the United States. The system includes 26 individual libraries including Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (the DCPL's central libra ...
, Special Collections. *Scenes of the Potomac –
Brunswick Heritage Museum The Brunswick Heritage Museum is a railroad and history museum in Brunswick, Maryland. History The Brunswick Potomac Foundation was founded during the town's 75th Anniversary Diamond Jubilee and originally focused on hosting local events includin ...
, Maryland, US. *River in Danielson, Connecticut –
Killingly Killingly is a New England town, town in Windham County, Connecticut, Windham County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 17,752 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It consists of the borough of Danielson, Connecticut, Dani ...
Public Library, Connecticut, US * Goat Island, Niagara –
Niagara Falls Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, ...
Library, Ontario, Canada *Priestly Clough and Fern Gore – held at Accrington Library * Stoodley Pike from Pecket Well – Todmorden Library *
Merthyr Dyfan Merthyr Dyfan or Dyfan is a northeastern suburb of Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, in south Wales, formerly an independent medieval village. It is also an ecclesiastical parish and a formal electoral ward of the Vale of Glamorgan. It borders Colco ...
Church – in possession of the
Church in Wales The Church in Wales ( cy, Yr Eglwys yng Nghymru) is an Anglicanism, Anglican church in Wales, composed of six dioceses. The Archbishop of Wales does not have a fixed archiepiscopal see, but serves concurrently as one of the six diocesan bishop ...
*View of the Atlantic from SS Laconia – Sayers Collection of Ocean Liner Ephemera,
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, Oxford *
Tintern Abbey Tintern Abbey ( cy, Abaty Tyndyrn ) was founded on 9 May 1131 by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow. It is situated adjacent to the village of Tintern in Monmouthshire, on the Welsh bank of the River Wye, which at this location forms the bo ...
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See section 8 (Accessions 1 Dec 2018 to 28 Feb 2019 in ''Quarterly bulletin of Gwent Archives'' http://moderngov.torfaen.gov.uk/documents/s38096/Bulletin%20Mar%202019.pdf?LLL=0 * Elterwater Tarn, and view of Derwentwater, Lake District –
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's office, Keswick *Sketch book containing various scenes including Monmouthshire, Pembrokeshire, Lancashire and Oxfordshire – Gwent Archives *
Llancaiach Fawr Llancaiach Fawr Manor is a Tudor manor house near the village of Nelson, located just to the north of the site of the former Llancaiach Colliery in the heart of the Rhymney Valley in South Wales. The semi-fortified house was built on the site o ...
Manor – on display in the manor house in Nelson, South Wales *
Mumbles Lighthouse Mumbles Lighthouse, completed in 1794, is a lighthouse located in Mumbles, near Swansea. The structure, which sits on the outer of two islands off Mumbles Head, is clearly visible from any point along the five mile sweep of Swansea Bay. Along ...
Oystermouth Oystermouth (a corruption of the Welsh name ''Ystum Llwynarth'' or ''Ystumllwynarth'') is a village (and former electoral ward) in the district of Mumbles, Swansea, Wales. It is part of the Mumbles community (civil parish). Description The ...
Library *Fifteen views of south Wales including Cwm-yr-Eglwys,
Merthyr Dyfan Merthyr Dyfan or Dyfan is a northeastern suburb of Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, in south Wales, formerly an independent medieval village. It is also an ecclesiastical parish and a formal electoral ward of the Vale of Glamorgan. It borders Colco ...
and
Porthkerry Park The hamlet of Porthkerry ( Welsh: Porthceri) lies on the Bristol Channel coast of South Wales within the community of Rhoose between that village and the town of Barry to the east. It is very close to the end of the runway of Cardiff Interna ...
National Library of Wales The National Library of Wales ( cy, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru), Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales and is one of the Welsh Government sponsored bodies. It is the biggest library in Wales, holding over 6.5 million boo ...
Part of the Welsh Landscape Collection at the National Library of Wales
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Gallery

File:Hebden Bridge.jpg , Hebden Bridge, undated File:Sully near Cardiff.jpg , View from 79 Cardiff Road, Barry towards the village of Sully (undated). Sully Moors in foreground File:Worrall painting 2.jpg , Worrall's depiction of himself File:Punting on the Cherwell.jpg , Martha and Bertha Worrall punting on the Cherwell at Oxford, c. 1918 File:Worrall Derwentwater.jpg , Derwentwater, Lake District, 1947 File:BillericaWorrall.jpg , Billerica, USA (1938) File:ItalyWorrall.jpg , Venice, undated


References


External links

* Includes six of Worral's watercolours {{DEFAULTSORT:Worrall, Thomas 1872 births 1957 deaths People from Wednesbury English watercolourists People from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Deaths from stomach cancer Deaths from cancer in Wales